Voices en Español

As many of you already know, I’ve been posting podcasts of short stories read by different bloggers. In the past two weeks there have been six different episodes published. The initial reception and reaction from listeners has been positive. So imagine my surprise to see the number of subscribers to the podcast dramatically drop last week.

Could there be that many people who were turned off by the short stories that they then took the extra step of canceling the subscription? A handful of people, sure. But hundreds? It didn’t make sense.

Then I remembered….iTunes will suspend a podcast subscription when the user hasn’t listened to any recent episodes. The magic number appears to be 5. If you have five or more unplayed episodes of a podcast on your computer, iTunes automatically stops downloading new episodes. The way to reactivate the podcast is to click on the exclamation mark next to the podcast name and manually inform iTunes that you wish to resume your subscription.

Since there have been six new podcasts issued in the past two weeks, it makes sense that  there might be a drop in the number of subscribers who appeared to have unsubscribed.  Actually, they probably haven’t. They’re just not listening.

I know that some people like to build up a bank of podcasts, especially when the episodes are short, and then listen to them all in one go. Here’s a solution: Whenever a new episode downloads to your iTunes account, go ahead and just click on it. You don’t actually have to listen to the entire episode at that time. Having the podcast play for even two seconds counts as a “partial play” and makes the iTunes software believe that you’ve listened to part of the podcast. Listening = Acknowledgement = Interest, which means your subscription stays current and future episodes will continue to download automatically.

By the way, if you haven’t subscribed to the podcast and would like to, click here to subscribe through iTunes or here to subscribe via Google Reader. Both options are free and you can cancel at any time with no further obligation.